The numbers from around the globe are in, and it’s official: 2016 was the hottest year on record, again.

According to independent analysis from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2016 was the third year in a row to break temperature records.

The New York Timescollected AccuWeather data for more than 5,000 cities, including Albuquerque, to illustrate temperature and precipitation changes.

Albuquerque’s average temperature last year was 2 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, while precipitation fell 2.8 inches short of normal.

Globally, the average temperature has risen by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1880s. And 9 of the 10 warmest years have occurred since 2000.

Meanwhile, Inside EPAreported that the Trump administration’s transition team for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to remove non-regulatory climate data from the agency’s website. According to the story, this includes things like references to President Obama’s 2013 Climate Action Plan and strategies for cutting methane.

During the early days of Gov. Susana Martinez’s administration, the New Mexico Environmental Department (NMED) did something similar.

As general counsel, [Ryan] Flynn approved NMED’s plans to repeal its own regulation tightening emission standards for motor vehicles, and the department has pulled down from its website links to Richardson-era NMED reports and recommendations on climate change. It even ended the Climate Masters Program, a class about climate change that covered topics like watersheds and permaculture.

It’s worth paying attention to what will happen in the coming days and months to federal websites like Climate.gov, which this week featured an animation of annual temperatures each year since 1880.

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New Mexico officials find themselves stonewalled by the United States military over water contamination from two U.S. Air Force bases in the state. In early May, New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas and New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) Secretary James Kenney sent a letter to the U.S. Air Force over contamination, this time at Holloman Lake.

Friday afternoon, Albuquerque middle and high school students took over a corner of the University of New Mexico's Johnson Field—and then a busy intersection nearby—to demand action on climate change. Alyssa Ruiz from Sandia High School told the crowd that while the United States plans to spend more than a billion dollars building a wall along the U.S./Mexico border, the Trump administration's proposed budget for 2020 cuts spending on renewable energy.

All week, we look for stories that help New Mexicans better understand what’s happening with water, climate, energy, landscapes and communities around the region. Thursday morning, that news goes out via email.

Holtec International was in the news last month when the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission denied requests from some groups to hold an additional hearing over the company’s license to build an interim storage site in southeastern New Mexico to hold nuclear waste from commercial power plants. The Camden, N.J.-based company is also hoping the NRC will allow it to buy a closed nuclear power plant in the Garden State so “it can decommission it and gain control over an almost $1 billion decommissioning fund,” according to a May 8 story from the Associated Press.

Holtec International was in the news last month when the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission denied requests from some groups to hold an additional hearing over the company’s license to build an interim storage site in southeastern New Mexico to hold nuclear waste from commercial power plants.

Laura Paskus has been writing about New Mexico’s natural resources and communities since 2002, as an assistant editor of High Country News, a radio producer at KUNM-FM, managing editor of Tribal College Journal and a freelancer for a variety of publications including the Santa Fe Reporter, New Mexico In Depth and Indian Country Today. Her work has also appeared in Al Jazeera America, Ms. Magazine, National Geographic Online, The Nature Conservancy Magazine, The Progressive, Columbia Journalism Review, The Mountain Gazette, Audubon and Orion. She's a correspondent for New Mexico In Focus and a graduate student in the University of New Mexico’s Geography and Environmental Studies Department.